“To understand that,” Ardent sighed, “you would have to understand the mind of a madman.” Spreading his hands wide, he tried to explain. “Let me put it like this. Magic is like imagination. It contains all possibilities. And just as you can imagine what might happen in the future, so too can the magic of the Pirate Stream contain the future. Serth drank that magic, and it gave him one of those futures. But in his mind, what he saw is the future—the only one.”
Next to Marrill, Fin shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“Congratulations,” Ardent told him. “You’re not insane.” He walked over to one of the bookcases and pulled down a long, narrow tube. “Perhaps a demonstration would help.” He plucked a ball from a nearby basket and placed it at one end of the tube. The other end of the tube, he pointed at the table.
“Now, imagine you’re this ball,” he said, letting it go. “All you know is forward, right? The only place the ball can end up is on the table.” The ball rattled as it rolled down the tube. “But it doesn’t have to end up on the table, does it?” Suddenly, he snapped the tube in half. The ball flew across the room, and Karnelius bolted from Marrill’s lap to chase after it.
“Serth’s mind is like that ball in the tube—it only sees one way forward.”
Finally, Marrill felt a glimmer of hope. “So Serth’s basically treating this Prophecy as an instruction manual, doing everything it says even if that means destroying the Stream. Can’t we just get a copy of that instruction manual and use it to stop him?”
Fin raised a hand for a high five. She started to go in for it when Ardent shook his head. “Unfortunately, that won’t be as helpful as you might think.” He made a beckoning motion to the air behind him. The cabinet door flew open, and a huge book leapt down and hobbled over, walking on the bottom corners of its cover. When it reached the desk, it flapped up through the air, clearly struggling to get altitude. Marrill giggled. It looked like a fat turkey trying to fly.
The book clattered to the desk and flopped open. Dust puffed up from its dry pages. “This, my young friends, is the Meressian Prophecy.”
“All of it?” Fin asked, voicing Marrill’s own disbelief. The book was huge.
“Oh no,” Ardent said with a laugh. “This is only one volume; there are several others like it. Unfortunately, just as Serth’s mind is like a shelf full of pages, each part of the Prophecy is about as useful as pulling random pages off that shelf. Completely disordered, no connection between one and the next, no means of telling what happens when.”
The wizard flipped through the book, the pages fanning past in a blur of ink. He stopped at the end, where the bottom of the page contained an etching of a massive gate. Drawn behind the elaborately carved bars was a stylized sun, its rays colored black.
“The only thing that’s obvious is the end of it.” Ardent touched his finger to the drawing, and the ink almost seemed to darken. “It was the very first verse Serth uttered. The Lost Sun.”
CHAPTER 31
A Wasteland in Crystal and Shadow
Fin stared at the drawing while Marrill read the last stanza of the Prophecy aloud:
The Lost Sun of Dzannin is Found Again
And as in the beginning, so it will end.
The ship drowns in the bay.
The guides thought true betray.
The city that slides, the ships collide,
The storm will rise—the iron tide!
The Key to open the Gate.
The Map to show the way.
And when Map and Key come together with me,
the Lost Sun dawns, the end is nigh!
“Well, that sounds dire,” she concluded. She began flipping through the massive book while Fin struggled to understand it all. Karnelius leapt up to the desk beside them, paw darting out to bat at the pages.
Fin frowned, trying to ignore the anxious rolling of his gut. “So that’s it? Serth has seen the future, it ends with him opening this gate and destroying everything, and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
He remembered Serth’s promise, that he could make Fin remembered forever. This ends when you give me the Key, the Oracle had said. Fin shook his head. That would make him remembered, all right: remembered as the one who ended the Pirate Stream! If, that is, there was anyone left to tell the tale…
The Stream was his home. It was his world. He’d never do anything to destroy it!
But what if… a small voice in Fin’s mind asked. What if it was him? What if there was no way to avoid the future? He stared down at the floor. He’d refused to accept that fate in the pie shop. There was no way he would give in to it now.
Ardent placed a hand on Fin’s shoulder. “No,” the wizard told him. “Serth has seen only one possible future. But there are other possibilities. Infinite others.” With a flick of his fingers, the ball Karnelius had chased earlier flew across the room to hover in front of Fin. “If this ball is your future, it doesn’t have to end up where the tube sends it. It can move in the direction you choose.”
He was interrupted by a sharp knock, and the ball dropped to the table. Coll swung the cabin door open, letting the bright sunlight spill in. “Storm’s cleared,” he said, leaning against a patch of bare wall between shelves. “No sign of Serth.”
Fin let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. It was only a matter of time before the Oracle found them again, he knew. But for now, at least, they were safe.
“So,” Ardent said, looking back to them, “to defeat Serth, we simply need to keep him from finding and opening the Gate.”
“Is that all?” Coll asked. Marrill smiled at Fin, and he felt his lips twitch upward in return.
“At least we’re one step closer,” she offered. “Right, Fin?”
Coll and Ardent spun to face him. The wizard’s eyes brightened. “Marrill, I see you brought an acquaintance back from the Grove with you. You do certainly seem to make friends wherever you go—a very admirable skill for one so young!”
“Great,” Coll grumbled. “Yet another room the pirats will have to make up.”
Marrill winked at Fin. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find a space for him. Because this friend just happens to have in his possession the next piece of the Map!”
On cue, Fin pulled the rolled-up parchment from his shirt. “Tralada!” he pronounced, holding it aloft. “The Face of the Bintheyr Map to Everywhere!”
“Excellent!” Ardent said, clapping his hands. He flicked his fingers, and the Prophecy book jumped from the desk to a nearby chair. He motioned to the empty space. “Let’s have a look!”
Showmanship was something Fin excelled at. He indulged himself in the moment, grinning as he unrolled the parchment with a flip of his hand.
The Face hit the desk with a less-than-dramatic thwump. Immediately it welled with details: Continents and islands and whole worlds rippled across its surface.
And then dripped from the sides. Without the Gibbering Grove to catch them, everything that appeared on the parchment spilled over the edge of the paper, flopping to the floor.
Faster and faster they came, turning into a torrent of inky features. Forests and mountains and cities poured out of the Map, splashing onto the floor and bouncing off in every direction.
Fin grabbed at them blindly, not knowing what else to do. A particularly pointy continent rolled toward Karnelius, who pounced instantly, batted it away, then tore after it and grabbed it in his mouth.
“Karny! No!” Marrill called, chasing after him. “Drop that landmass right now!”
Ardent jumped forward, sputtering and swatting at the endless flow, but his efforts were as useless as Fin’s. Map features were everywhere.
“Get that… everything off my ship!” Coll bellowed. He leapt from the wall, only to land on a wayward island and crash heavily to the floor.
“I’m trying!” Fin called back, juggling two castles with one hand while balancing a farmhouse on a snow-covered mountaintop with the other. More shapes were pour
ing out than he could possibly handle; it was pointless even to try. Still, it seemed impolite just to let them fall. These were real places, after all. Or at least, drawings of them.
Marrill streaked past, shouting, “Karny, leave it! Leave it!” as she chased him around the desk. From somewhere near the door, Fin heard a kaboom! and looked over to find a volcano shooting out from the cabin onto the deck, spewing smoke. In its wake, a small series of hills rolled underneath the bed.
The ship was being completely overrun! Fin dropped the landscape he’d been holding onto a nearby chair before lunging for the Map.
“Almost got it,” Ardent said, struggling with one corner of the parchment. Fin grabbed the other side and rolled it, sending a geyser straight into the wizard’s face.
“Agh, steam-bathed!” Ardent cried, blinking his eyes and swatting at his beard. He released his corner, and it snapped to Fin, spitting out one final knobby atoll before he could furl it shut.
Fin stared down at the roll of parchment in his hands, his mouth agape. He’d seen a lot of amazing things in his life (an excessive number of them in the last twenty-four hours alone), but never anything like this. Not even watching the Map at the Gibbering Grove had prepared him. The whole world had just poured out of a sheet of paper and laid siege to the Kraken!
“I think I did mention that defining the edges would be important,” said Ardent.
All around, stray terrain features scattered across the floor and hung limply from the shelves. Marrill cradled her cat, who appeared to be munching on the remains of a tiny farmhouse. Coll swept a tumble of three-ringed moons aside and rubbed his bruised leg. Fin crouched down by the open cabin door, trying to keep an elephano herd from stampeding out onto the main deck, where the volcano had sputtered and gone dormant.
“Perhaps the Neatline would be helpful at this juncture,” Ardent mused, toeing a slightly bedraggled reef.
Of course, how long it would take before they found that, Fin had no idea. “Any thoughts on where that might be?” he asked.
Coll stretched his arms over his head. “Ask the bird,” he said, yawning. Absently, he scratched at a spot below his collarbone where the edge of his tattoo was just visible under his shirt.
Ardent cleared his throat, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he peered at Coll. Something had caught his attention, but Fin couldn’t figure out quite what it was.
Coll stopped scratching, but his fingers lingered over the tattoo. The corners of his mouth tightened.
“Why don’t you two go play outside for a bit while Coll and I clean up in here?” Ardent tried to keep his voice cheery and light, but there was still a strained note to it.
Marrill was already trudging toward the door, barely containing a yawn of her own. “I’m thinking naptime,” she mumbled.
Fin thought about protesting, but one glance at Coll changed his mind. He stood stiffly against the wall, arms crossed tightly. “Sweet dreams,” the captain said pointedly, which was clearly Fin’s cue to leave.
He nodded, and followed Marrill down the winding stairs to their cabins. By the time his head hit the pillow, any thoughts about Coll or anyone else were long gone. He’d fallen instantly to sleep.
Fin yawned and rubbed his eyes. From the looks of things, it was night again, cold and dark. The walls of his cabin undulated, three of them looking like an endless stretch of water, while the fourth resembled the distant lights of the Khaznot Quay at night, just like the first time he’d seen it. A wash of pinprick lights arced across the ceiling, one star burning brighter than the others. He’d been dreaming about his mom again.
He stretched beneath his blankets. Had he really slept all day?
A strange, shimmering glow filtered in through a high porthole. It wasn’t the golden glow of the Pirate Stream; this was green, or was it blue? Or maybe orange? He tried to focus. Where were they?
The cold assaulted him as soon as he threw off his blanket. This wasn’t sundown chilly, or even Quay-wind frigid. It was serious cold, the type of cold that gives no warning. The kind of cold a body doesn’t feel, not all at once, because even the cold itself is frozen. Fin flexed his fingers and found them slow and stiff.
He slipped off the comfy bed, thrusting his hands into his armpits for warmth. Thick foggy clouds puffed out with his every breath. For a moment, he thought they might freeze entirely and fall to the floor. He yanked the blanket off the bed, wrapping it tight around his shoulders.
Outside his room, a thin white layer of frost covered the lacquered wood of the hallway, and an odd clicking sound filled the air. The frost crunched beneath his shoes as he headed for the spiral staircase, his blanket trailing behind him. As he passed different doors, he quickly realized where the clicking was coming from—it was the face-shaped door knockers, all chittering their teeth against the brass rings in their mouths.
Icicles clung to the grand staircase and its golden rails. He poked at one cautiously before climbing up and lifting the main hatch.
The cabin had been cold, but stepping out onto the deck was like walking into a wall. Fin recoiled, almost falling backward. But cold wasn’t the only thing outside. Overhead, the sky was on fire.
It was night, definitely night, but in the sky, a veil of light seemed to be cast over the darkness. Fin almost forgot the bone-chilling cold as he watched it. It danced, brilliant green curtseying to deep violet, and blue prancing into orange. This must have been the glow he’d seen through the porthole.
“Fin!” Marrill called. He struggled to tear himself away from the lights as she waddled toward him across the deck, bundled up in a thick wool coat. She was smiling, but her eyes were red. A single tear of frozen crystal clung to her cheek. “Nice getup,” she said, motioning to his blanket.
He looked down at it. “Oh, this? It’s for special occasions.” She smiled at him, but her expression was still pained. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Marrill rubbed a fur-lined mitten across her nose. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just worried about my mom, that’s all. Especially, you know, with the end of the world coming.” She sniffed hard, trying to laugh, but failing.
Fin started to raise a hand, then dropped it awkwardly. He still didn’t have much experience trying to make someone else feel better. “Well, you know, if the world’s going to end anyway, there’s no reason we shouldn’t take a peek at what’s behind the Bilge Room door.” Fin waggled his eyebrows in invitation.
The corner of Marrill’s mouth twitched. “And there’s this lush tentalo I’ve been saving,” he added, pulling the fruit he’d nicked from Squinting Jenny’s stand out of his thief’s bag. “It’s still not ripe, but I’m pretty certain if we toss it overboard we’ll get a crazy, howling explosion.”
She laughed fully now and Fin’s chest warmed. “That’s a terrible idea!” But then she turned serious for a minute. “Thanks, Fin.”
He nodded, heart swelling. “It’ll be okay, Marrill. I promise.” He dropped the tentalo back in his bag. He waited a second, then he said, “So, about that Bilge Room…”
She swatted at him, and he ducked out of reach. They laughed and teased their way over to the railing, and there they stopped, staring out at the vast expanse surrounding them. “Wow,” Fin breathed, taking it all in.
Great icebergs floated past the Kraken, some bigger than the ship itself. They gleamed with the colors of the midnight lights, making the whole world seem to glow in the darkness. Every now and then, one would let out a low, creaking squeal, and a moment later, part of it would break off and tumble into the water below.
This part of the Pirate Stream was a stream in earnest, a narrow river slashing across the frozen land. As they moved along it, the icebergs became ice cliffs, thrust up from a snowy plain. The boom of cracking ice came more often.
Not too far ahead of them, Rose banked in a wide arc, leading them on. “Where are we, anyway?” Fin asked.
Ardent harrumphed as he walked up. “These would be the Crystal-Shadow Wastes, unless
I miss my guess. Which I don’t, by the way. Rarely do ships travel here; most freeze solid and sink before they get too far, or else get crushed or swallowed by the ever-changing ice.”
He must have seen their look of concern, because he waved his hands dismissively. “Never to worry, I happen to be on good terms with both warmth and cold. Unlike some elements I might name, they are quite easy to get along with. Very different management styles, naturally, but both quite reasonable.”
“What Ardent is trying unsuccessfully to say is that he’s keeping us from freezing,” Coll said from his place at the helm.
Fin shivered. His fingers had gone numb, and he was pretty sure his nose was lined with ice. That seemed pretty much like freezing to him. “What about Serth?” he asked. “Any sign of him?”
“None reported,” Coll reassured him. “The pirats have pretty good eyesight, so I’ve posted them as lookouts.”
“Seems we’ve regained our lead after all,” Ardent added.
Just then, Coll shouted, “Hold tight!” and Fin looked to the bow. Up ahead, the waterway narrowed, thinned, and turned into ice and snow. The Stream had ended! Fin braced for impact, but the horrible crunch of wood against ice never came.
“No way!” Marrill cried. Coll let out a loud whoop of victory. Ardent put his hands together and smiled a self-satisfied smile. The ship was still moving.
Fin jumped to the rail and peered down. Marrill popped her head over just beside him. Snow swirled in little eddies around the hull as the ship’s prow moved through it. They were still sailing. On snow! “Shanks spinning!” he said to himself. “How?”
“I knew this was the right ship for the job.” Ardent said, beaming. “A true streamrunner runs the Stream wherever it goes, frozen or not!”
CHAPTER 32
It’s Right on the Tip of My Tongue
All around them, the ice boomed and shattered in the multicolored light. To Marrill, it was like counting seconds from a lightning strike to the thunder, only in reverse. Listen for the noise, then count seconds until the ice split. Great frozen cliffs came crashing down; fissures who-knew-how-deep spiderwebbed across the plain; new cliffs thrust up in unexpected shapes, like spirals and loop-de-loops. The whole world was constantly and violently changing.